New tunnel to Berlin 1

ARRIVAL

Its cold and windy and we are standing outside studentdorf reception building. We have been told that tomorrow is German reunification day and that since there have been terrorist threats we should try not to visit the crowded celebrations. We are too jet lagged to take it all in. The Roads were three laned and pretty much all traffic was whizzing around us and smoothly.
We landed at Studentdorf which seemed to be in an outskirts kind of posh neighborhood,( think of a sadashivnagar in devanhalli area.....)

The sun which had just come out for a bit as we landed, vanished and clouds came in and then a drizzle followed. We didnt see much around us as sights go. All we noticed was the cold wet tarmac and well bundled-up people speaking German at the desk and that our room keys were mysteriously missing.We spent over an hour or may be more getting acquainted with studentdorf admin processes, getting disheartened by the minute.
As the keys came in one by one ,the first one was for my colleague with the baby, who thankfully got her double room. The reception person held up a second key. I grabbed the key, said "danke " in smooth move displacing my male classmate with a stern "ladies first," ( actually my feet were killing me ) and walked into the small single room and headed off to check the restrooms. Aah...they were clean. Then the Bade zimmers- the bathrooms. Tada.... I had a bad case of culture shock. Beautiful shower cubicles with the red red shower curtains and no doors. Open to the larger room with three spotless sinks and thats that. It didn't seem there was any gender division in the bathrooms. AYYO...very nice but what if some one walked in if I was having a shower! Bitter with the wait and cold, hungry and with the shower curtain shock I said to myself " Oh my god, what karma."
After sorting out all the stuff in my head and then on the way to the supermarket for my first resource gathering, I thought of the program name " A new passage to India" and said to myself. "This country will have a lot to give me but I will have to mine it out. "
So that's why I am calling my blog new tunnel to Berlin. Pass me a shovel, volks ( F=V in german). I am going to be a miner in Duestchland. "Meera Miner." Sounds nice actually.
In my first walk around the streets I took these photographs. And hope you enjoy seeing in my web album what I saw. Its fall ( autumn) and the leaves are turning red and yellow and falling everywhere.




http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150732&id=732387989&l=c479c4f2e6

Graffitti is popular in here and is a landscape feature very much everywhere. Its something I intend to find more about.

Next: The Food Blog entry

Will keep updating this blog in between cooking, cleaning and working. I miss my friends soooo much.